Mr. VooDoo

In junior high, my friend Mark and I jotted off hundreds of voodoo curse notes and placed them all over the school. Our intent was to weird people out. The text of the notes read, "You is cursed, says Mr. VooDoo," and was accompanied by a badly drawn skull with a few feathers sticking out of it.

"You is cursed," says Mr. VooDoo.

We'd slip these notes into students' textbooks, teachers' grade books, people's lockers, under staff coffee cups, and inside teachers' office mailboxes. All over the place.

Luckily, our 8th-grade teacher found it amusing and gave us a special mention at graduation for making something entertaining out of nothing. She said she’d crack up whenever she opened a book and one of those notes fell out.

P-E-P-S-I S-P-I-R-I-T

In 1981, Pepsi launched a bottle cap collecting game to ignite the "Pepsi Spirit" in their customers. The idea was simple: collect the letters printed on the inside of each bottle cap to spell "Pepsi Spirit." This was before plastic twist-off caps were common, and you had to pop open a Pepsi with a bottle opener. Here’s the original commercial.

As a kid, I didn't realize that the rarest letter was the elusive R. I thought the distribution of letters was even, and I would excitedly tell people that we had all the letters except for the R. Little did I know, everyone was in the same boat.

One day, while stopping at a gas station, my friend and I thought we had struck gold. The gas station owner had altered a P into an R with a marker and had the caps displayed next to the register. We were ecstatic and thought our dream of completing the Pepsi Spirit was finally coming true.

"We have the E! You have the R! Let's go in together and split the money!" we exclaimed.

But then, the gas station owner laughed and pointed out that it was a fake R—one of the fifth ones he'd made because people kept stealing them!

Pretty good prank.

[Originally posted on Rebel Leady Boy, May 18, 2006]

Back in Town

I just returned from a trip home to Indiana for the sad occasion of attending my uncle's funeral.
Aside from the purpose of the trip, it was great to see the family and farmland again.

A lot of us had an early reunion at Chicago O'Hare Airport as all of our connecting flights were delayed or cancelled. I met my father and cousins Adam and Abby there and we all cancelled our connecting flights and took a bus to Indiana.  It was a riotous journey.

At the end of the trip, as we were all entering the airport to fly to our respective home states, Abby sent a fake can of peanuts with a springing snake it it through baggage check.  We were hoping the TSA guy would open it and get pranked. He laughed and refused to open it though. He said he saw the snake in the scanner.

Once back in Orange County, it took me two hours to get home from the John Wayne airport by bus, but it was totally worth it. The driver for the first segment of my ride should have been on American Idol! He sang really well. There were only three passengers on the bus, it was evening, and the driver was singing beautifully. A bunch of old Temptations songs, and I don't know what all. A bag lady who was riding would occasionally join in and they'd perform a duet. It probably was my most delightful bus ride ever.

Based on the three bus drivers I rode with to get home, I'd say that evening bus drivers are far more pleasant than daytime bus drivers (in Orange County, at least). It is probably the lack of traffic congestion.

[Originally posted on I'm Nacho Steppinstone, June 5, 2004]

Hit 'Em Again

At the time of the 9-11 attack on New York's World Trade Center, I was working the night shift in a San Bernardino gas station. The maintenance guy (Tony) used to come in at all hours and get drunk in the adjoining mechanics' garage since it was closed down in the evenings. There are a lot of funny memories around that situation, but I thought the funniest occurred the day after the 9-11 terrorist attack when everybody was driving around with American flags on their cars and reveling in lust for revenge.

The day after the attack, Tony was getting drunk in the garage like usual and a friend of his kept coming into the station and asking me, "What's Tony doing? Getting drunk?"

I don't know why he gave a shit, but it was really bothering him. Eventually he returned and said, "We should write something fucked up on Tony's truck since he's in there getting drunk." I didn't have anything better to do, so we threw around a few ideas, finally going with a pro-Bin Laden slogan.  After a little brainstorming, Tony's friend came up with the perfect thing.

As Tony pulled out of the parking lot later that night, his car displayed the phrase, "Hit 'Em Again, Bin!" printed across his tailgate in white shoe polish.

It was pretty funny. He later said people were honking at him and yelling at him all the way home. He assumed it was because he was driving drunk, so he'd slow down and then they'd pull up next to him, flipping him the bird, and yelling at him.

In retrospect, I'm surprised he didn't get shot.

[Originally posted on I'm Nacho Steppinstone, Dec. 14, 2003]